1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print processing system comprising a printer device and a printing instruction device, and more particularly to a print processing system, a print processing method, a print processing program, a printer device and a printing instruction device capable of instructing embossed print settings containing an object subject to embossed printing when embossed printing including an embossed image is executed according to document information subject to printing provided by an application and additional information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, image forming devices such as printers and copy machines for forming embossed images by an electrophotographic method or an electrostatic recording method and using an expandable toner are known.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 2001-134006, No. 2001-134091 and No. 2001-194846 disclose a technology of forming an embossed image by placing toner images containing color materials of prescribed colors on an expandable toner image in an electrophotographic recording process, expanding the expandable toner image by heating in a fixing step, and melting and fixing the toner images of the individual colors on the expanded toner image.
As a print processing system for achieving the above embossed printing, it may be configured to have a printer driver and a printer as shown in, for example, FIG. 44.
But, the printer driver used for such a conventional system merely has a processing function of generating, for example, a command in a PDL (Page-Description Language) form and sending it to a printer according to document information subject to printing by a drawing command from an application.
In other words, the printer driver of the above conventional system does not have a function of executing an embossed printing instruction about which part of the document information to be printed is embossed-printed and is naturally incapable of printing the designated part of the document information as an embossed image according to the embossed printing instruction.
Therefore, to achieve the embossed printing by the conventional system of the above type, the embossed printing instruction must be based on an application.
Thus, the conventional system is incapable of executing an embossed printing instruction about which part of the document information subject to printing is embossed-printed except that a special application having an embossed printing instruction function is used and has a disadvantage that an ordinary application and printer cannot be used to achieve the embossed printing.
As a print processing system for achieving the embossed printing as described above, it was considered to configure as shown in, for example, FIG. 45 that a particular data section in data (document information) to be printed and input from an information input section was instructed from a user by some method and the instructed data section was printed as an embossed image by a printer using fixed embossed output specifications previously provided for the system.
The conventional system of the type described above was capable of instructing which part of the data to be printed was embossed-printed but was not provided with a function of instructing embossed output specifications indicating how to form an embossed image.
Therefore, the embossed printing of the data section instructed by the user was limited to the embossed output specifications predetermined by the system.
Thus, the conventional system can instruct which part of the data to be printed is embossed-printed but has drawbacks that it cannot instruct the embossed output specifications indicating how to form an embossed image, so that the data section instructed by the user must be embossed-printed with the embossed output specifications predetermined by the system, and embossed printing satisfying various embossed output specifications desired by the user cannot be executed.
There is also a known unique data-added print processing system which adds unique data to text data to be input from external software and performs an image print output processing according to the text data to which the unique data is added.
As a method of achieving such a type of unique data-added print processing system, for example, the printer driver having received data (text data) to be printed from the application adds unique data to be input from the device per se to the text data and sends it to the printer, and the printer prints out an image having a mixture of the text data from the application and the unique data added by the printer driver.
FIG. 46 is a conceptual diagram showing a flow of the print processing by the above-described type of conventional system.
In FIG. 46, when text data “AAA” to be printed is input from a general-purpose application, a printer driver 70a adds, for example, data “confidential” as unique data to generate print data and sends it to a printer 80a. 
In this case, the print data being sent from the printer driver 70a to the printer 80a includes, for example, a drawing command in a PDL (Page-Description Language) form or the like, and especially it includes a drawing command (PDL command) corresponding to the text data “AAA” and the unique data “confidential” added thereto.
Meanwhile, the printer 80a analyzes the print data being input from the printer driver 70a and prints out the pertinent data according to the drawing command contained therein.
In the print processing process of the above conventional system, the print data generated by the printer driver 70a is a drawing command indicating simple drawing of the text data “AAA” and the unique data “confidential”, and the output result by the printer 80a is simple printout of images corresponding to both data as an ordinary non-embossed image.
Therefore, it is impossible for the user to determine by simply seeing the printed result whether the “confidential” is the unique data added during the processing.
As a specific example of the conventional system of the type described above, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 9-150559 discloses a printer system which pastes image data corresponding to unique data to a fixed form of document corresponding to text data and prints it.
According to the above conventional system, both the text data (fixed form of document) and the unique data (image data) are simply printed as an ordinary image (non-embossed image), and it cannot be judged that the image data was added during the processing (printer driver 70a).
Thus, the above-described conventional system generates the drawing command according to the text data which is input from external software and the unique data added during the processing and prints out both the data as the ordinary plane image according to the drawing command. Therefore, it has a drawback that the user cannot distinguish between the text data input from the external software and the unique data added during the processing by simply seeing the printed result.